Walls of styrofoam boxes pile up across Hong Kong after cross-border truckers told mainland China no longer taking them

Containers used by drivers to bring fresh food into city, but mainland wholesale markets no longer willing to take them back due to infection fears

Food and Environmental Hygiene Department says they are responsibility of ‘street management’, which usually means assortment of government entities

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Styrofoam boxes piled up near Chun Yeung Street Market in North Point. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 9:41pm, 16 Feb 2022

Styrofoam boxes used to bring vegetables over the border have piled up on Hong Kong streets after mainland Chinese authorities refused to take them back due to the city’s worsening Covid-19 crisis, according to truck drivers.

The containers are a staple of the fresh food trade and usually hauled back to the mainland wholesale markets where they are used again. But some drivers told the Post on Wednesday that surging infections had made the market operators wary about contracting the virus from contaminated boxes.

While Hong Kong has a small recycling programme for styrofoam boxes, the volume now exceeds what can be processed.

As a result, towering walls of styrofoam boxes have been forming near wet markets in North Point and Tsuen Wan, growing in weight by an estimated one tonne a day.

One cleaner, who works near a North Point wet market, says she collected enough containers to fill at least 10 trucks on Tuesday alone. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

“It is quite hard for us to clear the boxes every day, especially when refuse collection points were already full from last week,” said a 47-year-old cleaner, who did not want to be identified.